TITLE: Warriors Over Darkness
GENRE: YA Urban Fantasy
Lonely heels paced the ashen concrete scattered with crunched leaves as the amusement park’s midnight closing hour commenced. Just outside the city limits, lights deactivated, gates slammed, feet pattered, and distant shouts of farewells drifted through the cool air of Chicago along with the leftover waft of grilled meat and sugary dough.
Aleera Merrick ran an irate hand through the mess of dark curls ravishing her broad shoulders. The crew hooted and hollered, putting her more on edge as she pondered the whereabouts of the elderly owner. Unsure she’d come out unscathed, or even alive from the vengeful bloodshed she sought, it was imperative she said goodbye.
After years of tracking, the time to reunite with the ancient half-breed—Succubus and Vampyre—that murdered her grandfather was near. He trained her in combat against daemonic creatures, but he never wanted her involved in the underground world. He was paranoid. Constantly rambling about prophesies and daemonic beings with diabolical plans. She deemed him downright fanatical.
A sweep of air escaped her nostrils, recalling his contradictory ways. Although he stayed clear of daemonic creatures, there was one he couldn’t destroy nor even snub. Mirenda sold him a sob story of seeking control of her hunger, and before Aleera could protest the woman and her two siblings invaded her living quarters like a pack of rats seeking shelter from a blizzard.
Disgusted, Aleera perfected deathly sneers and vowed to kill them…but Mirenda struck first. In the end she couldn’t control her savagery and sucked Aleera’s grandfather dry.
I don't think I'd keep reading. It seems like a lot of data dump for the first 250 words. I kept waiting for something to happen to propel the story forward but it seemed like it was a rehash of what happened prior to the opening of the story.
ReplyDeleteYour descriptions could be quite stunning, but the go on too long. I had a hard time reading past the first paragraph. What could be tantalize ends up coming off as verbose.
ReplyDeleteYou might have a really good story here, but you have to get us into the story quickly. Work on that opening, tighten it up, don't worry so much about us seeing and hearing every nuanced detail of the scene right up front. You can work these beautiful descriptions in later, but subtly, lightly. Pepper them throughout your story so they seem natural. Don't bombard your reader with them all at once.
It's an interesting start in what seems to be an event scene, but then the first pargraph gets bogged down with too much description, and the narrative drifts off into backstory. I would save some of this explanation for later in the story to make more room for the current scene.
ReplyDeleteIn the first paragraph, I think just a couple of vivid sensations described more centrally from Aleera's POV would be stronger.
Watch where you place your modifiers. A sweep of air wasn't recalling his contradictory ways, but that's how it reads.
My biggest problem here is the trouble with the tenses. The entire story is past-tense, so things that occurred further in the past should be in past perfect: "He had trained her... but he had never wanted... He had been paranoid... she had deemed..." etc. Having all of the backstory about the grandfather in simple past tense made me think for a bit that she was talking about the elderly owner.
You have great imagery and the story sounds cool, but I agree with the others about toning down the language a bit. This reads like adult literary fiction and not YA. I think every noun in the first sentence has an adjective. In my writing I try to include only a few details (firespark's advice was dead on) but make sure they're SIGNIFICANT, something that will tell us about the character, something that makes us say, "Oh, yeah, I know exactly what she's talking about."
ReplyDeleteI also agree about the data dump. In my first novel (unpublished) pretty much the entire first chapter was narration (and backstory.) I thought it was engaging and informative. Turns out it just kept people from getting into the story.
Also, I'd uncontract "she'd" in the second paragraph. It was unclear for a second whether you meant "she had" or "she would".
I suspect that later in the story you relax the syntax a little and I'd be excited to read that! We all try a little too hard with the opening. (Because it's SO dang important.) I think you've got what it takes, just consider the advice in these comments and do what you feel will make it stronger.
Good luck!
I have to agree with what's been said already. I started skimming by the end of the first paragraph, because the adjectives got overwhelming. Colorful descriptions are good, but sometimes it's better to stick with one strong image to grab the reader. The abundance of action verbs pulled me out as well -- lots of great words, but so close to one another, they lost their impact.
ReplyDeleteI was confused at the appearance of the hooting and hollering crew. From the first paragraph, I thought Aleera was alone, if not in the whole park, at least in her immediate vicinity.
This next is a pet peeve of mine, so it's possible it's just me: be careful of assigning emotions to body parts, when it's the character feeling those things. How can her heels be lonely? How can a hand be irate? I can grok that the sound of heels clicking over an empty midway at closing time can *sound* lonely, and that the rough or frustrated action of pushing back her hair stems from her irateness, but as-is, it makes the hands and feet sound as though they have thoughts and feelings of their own.
Like Heather, I think the third, fourth, and fifth paragraphs would be clearer with a bit of past perfect. On first read, I thought Mirenda had moved in and killed Aleera's grandfather in the same night.
You have an intriguing setting with the amusement park, and the elderly owner clearly means something to Aleera. Might the backstory about her grandfather and Mirenda be revealed during her goodbyes instead?
Good luck!
You have an engaging voice, and that's fabulous! Though this excerpt is a tad heavy-handed, take heart because you can weave action in with your description to make it all work.
ReplyDeleteJust a few suggestions:
What if you had her respond emotionally to the environment? The way it is now, she offers an observation without personal connection. Making your description personal will make it more engaging.
What if, instead of stating she has a mess of dark curls, some of those crunched leaves tangle in her hair and she combs them out with her fingers. So you have environment and character description intertwined.
What if, instead of the backstory about grandpa, you had this information relate to the environment of the scene. Maybe the abandoned amusement park is a typical place for a half-breed to show up.
My point is to keep everything connected and balanced, and that way you can eat your cake and have it, too. The way this is right now, each paragraph stands alone and none appear connected to the other. Cohesion will work in your favor.
I'd agree that you need to exercise some restraint with your adjectives. An adjective on every noun slows down the reading process and makes the language feel heavy. You also might want to do the same for some of the verbs. It can be hard because we get so much advice about choosing strong verbs, but I think it's possible for a verb to be too strong for its place in the story. I'm thinking particularly of her 'mess of dark curls ravishing her shoulders.'
ReplyDeleteYou're obviously a talented writer and you can do powerful things with language, but you'll achieve a better result with more precision.
It feels too hard for me. I'm not hooked. And it doesn't have a YA voice to me. There is something interesting about the writing, nice descriptions, but not enough to kep me reading.
ReplyDeleteAll the extra descriptive words and grammar issues make this a hard read (you need commas in your run-on sentences). I also agree this doesn't come across as YA mostly because any dramatic/ emotional ties to the MC are getting lost in keeping up with the scene-setting. It'll be important later, but in order to hook your reader in right away, we need to care about Aleera. If you started with the first sentence of paragraph 2, "Aleera ran an irate hand..." and nix whole second sentence, we instantly feel her mood, see how she looks and have sense of her conflict.
ReplyDeleteThink of the first few sentences of a novel as a condensed version of the overall theme. It often tells the reader what is to come or what could be. For instance:
ReplyDeleteMr. and Mrs. Dursley of Number Four Privet Drive were proud to say that they were completely normal, thank you very much.
This is so subtle, yet so overt you can't help but wonder: why are they proud to be normal? Upon reading further you realize that being normal is, in fact, the oddity in this story.
Of course, you can start your novel any which way, but for greater impact the opening sentences should have a purpose that pertains to the theme. I didn't get that with this opening. Plus, you start with a POV other than the MC (very risky) and it's a tad overwritten too.
Now, I want to say that I liked the bit of backstory (it was nice) but it was done at the wrong time. I was confused the entire time because you did what I like to call "adjusting the lens" too much. You kept zooming us into the scene at hand, then back out with backstory, then zooming us in again and so on... You can imagine how disorienting that must be for us to read, considering the actual act of zooming in and out constantly is quite tedious as well.
I think you need to rework this. There is some great stuff here but it needs more focus. Focus on the MC and the conflict she is facing at that instant; the reader will be more interested in her thought processes than things that occurred off page.
Good luck!
Everyone has already mentioned this but I'll echo them - I'd recommend cutting out a lot of the adjectives. The more there are, the more it slows down the reader and feels overwhelming. Look at the meat of what you're trying to convey and choose just one or two adjectives to describe it. Also, try breaking up one sentence into several. For example: "Lonely heels paced the ashen concrete scattered with crunched leaves as the amusement park’s midnight closing hour commenced." What's the most important thing to convey here? The loneliness of the park? The color of the concrete? The season and weather? Also, whose lonely heels are you referring to - Aleera who is pacing and waiting, or other visitors who are leaving the park? I'd recommend boiling it down to make it precise and tight first, then fluff it out with some lovely descriptions.
ReplyDeleteMy thoughts were similar to everyone else's regarding the adjectives--too many, and you're allowing some of them to do things they can't do. In the first parg. you have an irate hand and lonely heels. Body parts don't have feelings.
ReplyDeleteI also wondered about the lonely heels since they're coming out of an amusement park at closing time, so wouldn't there be a mass exodus? What are the chances of just hearing a single person's footsteps.
Overall, I'd suggest your character do something, rather than think. The back story can always come later. Start the story with something happening.
At first I liked the powerful images that you were creating, but like everyone else has mentioned the images were soon bogged down by too many adjectives. I think you could create some really vivid scenes if you carefully cut them down.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the comment earlier about intertwining the backstory with the scenery. I like the backdrop of the carnival. You can tell something exciting is going to happen. But then instead we get a long description and a lengthy backstory. Choose your details carefully. Pace the information you share with the unfolding scene.
Aleera felt about mid-twenties to me. Maybe it was the way she talked about her story in the past tense, but it feels like she's sharing her teenage years with us, and now she's an adult. Take your time with the backstory, and let us see images. Was she very young when this happened? Was it very recent?
I'm not sure I can say much anything new that hasn't already been said.
ReplyDeleteIt felt like too much back story before I'm invested in the MC. I need to care about the MC before I want to learn about her past and what's leading up to the action.
I'll also mention that the first sentence of the second paragraph snapped me out of what I was reading. I think it was the "ravishing" part that really pulled me out. Just my opinion, but it didn't set well with me.
Hope this helps a little!
I'm trying to read through all the entries, so to do so I'm going to avoid all of the comments. I just don't have enough time. So forgive me if I repeat anything.
ReplyDeleteMy first thought is that your first paragraph *could* be beautiful. You have some amazing descriptions, but in the longer sentences, those descriptions get lost. Try to cut the sentences in half. Make two sentences out of one long sentence. It will make it more dramatic, and it will flow more easily for the reader.
My next thought was a little one, but I want to be honest with the parts that gave me pause. So, "irate hand" made me think, "Wait. Her hand is irate?" Of course I know what you meant, but the wording made me pause, so that isn't good.
I was confused by the third paragraph - is it the half-breed that trained her, or her grandfather? Maybe a slight tweak to those words would help to clarify for readers like me.
Info, description, and backstory dump. Also, nothing to pinpoint Aleera as a young adult--it could easily be adult. Start with a scene of action and conflict, not reflection.
ReplyDeleteThis would be a form rejection for me.